Civil war: How the RFU has torn itself apart

The affair of the performance director role has been a humiliating and shameful mess that English rugby can ill afford

Woodward's unrivalled record with England is just one reason for his candidature (David Davies)

Many other countries detest what they see as the arrogance of the governing
body in England calling itself the Rugby Football Union, not the English
Rugby Union. They are wrong. The RFU is the original, 140 years old and
still the biggest and most influential. Even when it has made mistakes, it
has done so with a certain grace and charm.

But grace and charm and all their sisters were run clean out of Twickenham
last week. In their places came a morass of duplicity, humiliation and
self-serving in which the interests of the national team were forgotten. The
week ended with a massive chasm in the union and a letter of explanation
sent by John Steele, its chief executive, to members of the RFU council that
in the eyes of some who have read it raises more questions than it answers.